


Soup for the Soul

by Januarium



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 23:06:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Januarium/pseuds/Januarium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dani goes to work that day it’s surprising not to see Rachel, or Kurt. When Santana comes in though, she knows that something is really wrong. Set just after Finn’s death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soup for the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this just after watching the Quarterback, and then left it. I just found it and decided to give it a finish, but this was largely written back then.

There is a day when Dani gets the early shift. Rachel’s supposed to be on with her, but Gunther says she’s not coming. She has an uncharitable moment where she suspects the drama queen tendencies she has heard about from her, before shaking her head at herself. Rachel probably won’t be at the diner long anyway, with Funny Girl starting rehearsals in a month, but she stays because she likes it. Maybe Dani will make some chicken soup (or… what’s the vegan equivalent?) and bring it by for her, and it would only slightly be an excuse to spend more time with Santana.

When Kurt is also out for his shift, starting four hours into hers, Dani gets more worried. She and Santana had shared a few flirting texts last night and there hadn’t been any mention of sickness sweeping the loft. On her break Dani checks and hasn’t got any messages. Santana is supposed to work the last hour with her, they were hoping to do their first duet for the customers, and Dani’s sure Santana would tell her if she wasn’t going to be in.

Sure enough, Santana shows up, right on time. Almost verging on late actually, so she rushes straight into work. Dani tries to catch her eye and it doesn’t quite work. Santana is usually pretty great with the customers - sure, she skirts the edge of insulting them (and Dani admits she finds that charming), but she is good at giving them a smile that makes everything a joke again. She works hard at the whole job and does it well.

This hour she’s a mess. She isn’t quite doing anything wrong, but she’s jagged as she does everything. Their names are off the song lead roster and and when she dances it’s almost aggressive. It would be sexy if it wasn’t scary to see her like this. Just as Dani’s clocking out she hears a commotion and realises Santana just nearly made one of the grill guys cry.

She waits as Gunther talks to her and it’s clear he’s sending her home, but he doesn’t look nearly as pissed off as she’d expect. Dani stands just inside the door and when she reaches it Santana finally meets her eye and her face is blank.

“Want me to walk you home?” Dani asks, tentatively. While things have been pretty amazing so far between them, it’s still new.

A flash of something - fear, maybe?- rolls across Santana’s face and she shakes her head. “Why don’t we go to your place?”

Dani is pretty sure there is some hint of trying to be suggestive there, but it’s off. Something is wrong, but it’s clear Santana doesn’t want to talk about it and so she nods and holds out her hand. At least her roommate is going to be out all day.

Santana clutches tight as they walk silently and partway there they pass the shop where Dani buys her groceries and she remembers her earlier plan. “Hey, do you mind if I pick up some stuff?”

Santana nods definitively and they both go in. Dani expected her to stick close by, but instead she is off buying ingredients of her own. Dani tries to remember a comfort food recipe that doesn’t involve large quantities of meat, or butter, or cream. In the end she decides on vegetable soup, a thick and hearty one. Soup is always the right thing when things are bad, right?

They meet again at the check-out line and Dani insists on combining their baskets and paying for all of it. Santana is still so strangely quiet and they can’t hold hands and the bags at the same time, but they stay close to each other.

Once in the apartment they go into the tiny kitchen. Santana has only been here a couple of times, but she immediately starts getting things out of cupboards; bowls and measuring cups. There isn’t space for them to both cook different things at the same time, really, but somehow Dani knows she needs to start, Santana obviously doesn’t want help or to be watched, so she starts chopping vegetables. Waiting.

“Someone died.” Santana says eventually and it’s like a punch in the gut even though somehow Dani knew. She keeps chopping and waits. “He was this asshole I went to high school with,” Dani knows full well she went to school with Kurt and Rachel, that it must have been someone they all knew. She concentrates on the movements of her knife, cutting the carrots up as finely as she can manage. “He was a football player, except he was fucking awful at it until Junior year, and he couldn’t dance for shit, and he outed me, and he- he-” her voice is histerical and Dani puts down the knife and walks behind Santana and holds her tight. She accepts it now, sagging into her touch, but still stirring the batter in front of her.

“I’m here,” Dani says, because she’s only experienced a true loss once, when her Uncle died when she was sixteen, but sorry from people who didn’t know him was the worst thing to here. And Santana isn’t exactly painting an image of a great person in her life, she can’t tell yet if this is all there is.

“Thank you,” Santana says in a small voice. She puts down the spoon and grabs Dani’s hands tight, pulling them further around her before letting go and pushing her away a bit. Dani gets it, goes back to her chopping and listening.

“His name was Finn.” The name is familiar, but they have so many stories of their high school life and Dani hasn’t managed to get them straight in her head yet. “Finn, he was… ugh he had that stupid gassy smirk, and those custard nipples. He was the only guy I ever really regretted screwing, because his stupid virginity mattered so fucking much to him.”

Dani’s knife falters at that. They haven’t talked about exes that much, but she knew that Santana started up with her bisexual ex in sophomore year, and she’d assumed… Well. She’d assumed.

“Oh fuck,” Santana says, and this is obviously so much more present. “Fuck, I didn’t want to tell you that. I mean, not like that, I am totally gay, I promise, I just- it was-”

Dani puts the knife down and turns around, Santana is looking horrified. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, what you did in the past is your business. If you want to tell me more about it, I’m listening, but you don’t have to.” She’s secretly impressed she sounds so calm, really she just wants to grab Santana tight, but the barriers are up and it’s nothing like she’s seen her before.

Santana turns back to find a cake pan, so Dani grabs a frying pan and a pot from the same cupboard, puts oil in one and water in the other and turns up the heat.

“He was going to marry her. Rachel, I mean,” and that is when it clicks, because she has heard the story of Finn, so briefly, in a list of people from their glee club. Rachel’s ex-boyfriend and Kurt’s brother, fuck. “They had this whole fucking rushed teen wedding planned, I was a bridesmaid. I mean, I was a fucking bridesmaid, me and Rachel had barely even had a civil conversation ever, I’d broken them up on purpose the year before, but we were a family.”

That is hard to imagine - Rachel and Santana not being close. The first time she’d seen either of them they’d been laughing together. She had briefly wondered if they were a couple because they could be so comfortable and in sync with each other. Santana fills the cake tin, and Dani squeezes past her to dump the vegetables in the frying pan. It’s probably time to actually say something. “It’s hard to imagine you and Rachel ever not being friends.”

Santana snorts with laughter and then looks so shocked at herself for it. “It’s changed really quickly, you probably wouldn’t recognise us even a few months ago.” She finishes getting the batter into the tin and gestures for Dani to move so she can put it in the hot oven - Dani hadn’t even noticed her turning it on.

“You know, Finn did this whole diva week thing in February, he was running the glee club, and he called me up and said, ‘I need someone to show them what a diva really is.’” She’s tidying up everything she’s used as she speaks. “I was a total mess, I’d dropped out of college and not told anyone, and I don’t even know what I thought I was doing, but he called me and I came back and that’s when I realised I had to come here.”

Dani nods, moving on with the soup, listening. It’s a shock to realise quite how much she doesn’t know about Santana, to be learning her this way, but mostly her mind is racing trying to figure out how to help.

Once the soup is simmering, and Santana’s cleared everything up as if she’d never been there they stop and look at each other. There’s a pause before Santana finally moves forward, arms open, and Dani can just hold her, like she’s wanted to the whole time.

“Can I stay here?” Santana asks. “They’ve gone back to Lima, I needed to let them go without me, I’ll fly down when we know when the funeral is.”

Dani nods immediately. “Of course.” She probably should have realised that, and she can’t help thinking that she could have put some damn meat in the soup. But right now, as they stand there in the kitchen with the smells of their comfort food cooking, all she can do is hold Santana and be there and hope that’s enough.


End file.
